Daniel Uria/Staff Writer
Bigger is better. At least, that’s usually the convention when it comes to logos. Engineers at FIU’s Advanced Materials Engineering Research Institute lab, however, have taken the opposite approach. The lab has created the smallest FIU logo ever made.
The microscopic FIU logo was micro-milled onto a piece of human hair through the use of a focused ion beam. The logo was created in an effort to demonstrate AMERI’s capabilities with electron microscopes.
AMERI was the brainchild of former Dean of Engineering Vish Prasad and Kinzy Jones, the founding director in 2003. AMERI was created in order to consolidate resources from FIU’s Modesto Maidique Campus and the Engineering Center in order to create an “open access research environment.” This was done with the hopes of recruiting world-class researchers to the University and ultimately driving its nanotechnology research forward.
Neal Ricks, AMERI’s manager, explained that the conception for the idea of the logo came after a request from the Engineering Dean’s Office to produce images from the lab for posters. “I thought it would be good to give them images made with the electron microscopes that would be indicative of the type of work being done at the Institute,” said Ricks.
With this concept in place, the idea to “write” the FIU logo on a piece of hair came from Ali Hadjikhani, focused ion beam operator.
“That would serve the purpose of demonstrating our capability as well as providing an easily recognizable frame of reference,” said Ricks.
With the idea in place, Ricks and Hadjikhani immediately gathered a piece of hair to place the logo on. Although the hair was almost half as thin as an average strand of human hair, Ricks states that Hadjikhani was able to place the logo quickly and with relative ease.
“The actual process of performing the milling was not at all labor intensive due to the automated nature of the instrument. Total run time was about two and a half minutes,” said Ricks. “We are fortunate to have attracted such talent to our staff.”
Although it was not necessarily the goal of AMERI to create the world’s smallest FIU logo, it is not the first time they have used FIU symbols to demonstrate the power of the focused ion beam. Ricks referenced an early AMERI project in which they milled “FIU” in block letters onto the eye of a Lincoln penny.
One of the most interesting aspects of this project is the irony of creating a logo so small that it can only be seen using a high-powered microscope. Ricks admits that they did not set out to be ironic.
“Although obvious in retrospect, I don’t think any of us were thinking about it in that way at the time,” said Ricks.
Although it was not intentional, the irony is not lost on Ricks or the members of AMERI. He reflected back on an incident that occurred while presenting the Lincoln penny project to the Board of Directors.
“As part of my presentation, I asked that they pass the penny around while I put up a slide showing the pattern we had made, which was only visible under high magnification,” said Ricks.
“After the presentation broke up, I realized my penny was not returned and someone had kept it. I thought, ‘How will this person show off his memento, do they own an electron microscope?’ I guess it shows that people no longer have any trouble believing in things they cannot see.”
-daniel.uria@fiusm.com
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